A Shadow and A Thought
by LadyKnightOfHollyrose
Summary: Damian's first memory is broken and fragmented; shards of stained glass too small to piece back together without getting cut, without the image slipping from his grasp entirely. Peter Pan-esque AU.


**The Trope Meme  
**_14: Mythical Creature/Human & Meeting in a Dream_  
**Summary:** Damian's first memory is broken and fragmented; shards of stained glass too small to piece back together without getting cut, without the image slipping from his grasp entirely. Peter Pan-esque AU.

**. . .**

**A Shadow and A Thought**

**. . .**

"You know **that place between sleep and awake**, the place where you can remember dreaming? That's where **I will always love you**, that's where **I'll be waiting**."

—Peter Pan

**_One_**

Damian's first memory is broken and fragmented; shards of stained glass too small to piece back together without getting cut, without the image slipping from his grasp entirely.

It's the quiet tinkling of laughter that echoes through the back of his mind and the occasional flash of white in the dark of teeth bared in a playful grin. It's the soft patter of pixie boots and a fluttering of sunny yellow at the corner of his vision.

It's vision that he knows has never graced him in his walking hours. And yet it's these scraps of recollection feel more real to him than anything he has ever consciously experienced.

It isn't until Damian turns three that he is able to capture the image of his nightly visitor in his memory as anything but a blinding burst of colour. The boy – for he is a boy of perhaps eight or nine years – is lithe and graceful with soft, dark hair falling into his elvin face and framing wide blue eyes.

When Damain's eyes slide shut as night falls, he's always greeted by the sight of a bright smile. He quickly becomes accustomed to the way the boy dances through his seemingly unable to stay still for more than a moment.

There isn't anything particularly spectacular about any of these dreams. Sometimes they will toss a ball back and forth, the other doing increasingly ridiculous tricks before catching the ball for Damian's entertainment. Sometimes the boy will juggle while Damian attempts to throw off his rhythm by throwing an extra ball into the mix.

The boy never falters, despite how hard Damian tries to distract him.

Sometimes the boy will roam the depths of his mind while walking in his hands, legs in the air as he chatters at Damian cheerfully.

It's rare that Damian can remember any dream in its entirety even if he can now recall the appearance of the boy in his dreams; still, he remembers the warmth. The boy is free with affection in a way that Damian has never experienced awake, ruffling his hair with a wink, squeezing his shoulder in reassurance or poling his side mischievously. Damian's old enough to understand his instructors when they insist that such actions are signs of weakness; that emotion will only hinder him. So he confines these moments of comfort to his dreams. Dreams _are_ only dreams after all – they are not something that he can physically control, nor will they hamper his training.

It's rare that Damian can remember any dream in its entirety, but one of them stands out in his memory in particular.

It had been one of the days that the boy had been pacing restlessly across the floor on his hands. He had turned to Damian abruptly and said, "I wish I could tell you my name… But if I do, I won't be able to go home." Damian couldn't deny that he had been curious about his name, but he could hear the regret in the other's voice. Still, he brightened when he continued. "But if you want, you can call me Robin." He'd gone on to ramble that it had been a name his mother had teasingly given to him but by then Damian had stopped listening.

Now that he has a name for the boy, he feels like the dreams are harder to dismiss; that Robin's _presence_ is harder to dismiss. It has him wondering whether he might ever meet Robin while awake, if the boy actually exists beyond the imaginings of his mind…

And then he's brought back to Earth by the stinging sensation of his knuckles being struck in reprimand for letting his thoughts drift. Damian turns his attention back to his studies for the time being. Robin is never more than a thought away, after all.

~Hollyrose~

**Notes:**

Children's first memories are thought to occur at about two or three years of age (I'm guessing this would have been a little earlier for Damian, actually, but I've kept this at three years just in case).

I'm writing this while mostly sticking to pre-reboot canon, though I might need to use a tiny bit of artistic licence to make things fit later on (it's a canon!AU so I guess that's okay?). I've had this idea for a while so I'm glad to finally be able to write/post it! Also, thank you for the warm welcome to fandom, guys! Hope you enjoy this fic as well ^^


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